


a fierce inequality of love

by shinyfire



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, POV Female Character, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:14:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24527473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinyfire/pseuds/shinyfire
Summary: Christine reflects on the events of her past with Erik and Raoul.
Relationships: Christine Daaé/Erik | Phantom of the Opera, Raoul de Chagny/Christine Daaé
Comments: 22
Kudos: 21





	a fierce inequality of love

_London_

_April 1915_

It is hard to know where to begin when I have such a story to tell, such an explanation to give. You deserve an explanation after my treatment of you; it is shameful that you should read of that most wretched of times in the pages of a lurid novel. I am so glad that unlike you, M. Leroux was unable to find me - I can think of almost nothing worse than having that man question me on this matter - for is he said to be loud and vulgar, and I find it odd that he should have chosen to relate my story to the world. You must remember that the decisions I made were those of a frightened, lonely girl, barely out of her childhood - that they would not be the decisions that I would make now is of no consequence; I cannot allow myself the luxury of regret.

I began at the Opera two years after the death of my father, although I had been living in Paris for several months studying voice at the Conservatoire. To say that I merely felt saddened at the loss of my father would be a gross understatement. Two years after his death I still felt the slow ache of grief almost as keenly as the day he had died. I felt as though my life was taking place in a drawing, all colourless and flat. I observed the world through a window, never able to take part, to really hear others or to make myself heard. When I wasn’t taken up in the swirl of rehearsal and practice, I think I would sit motionless for hours, for to do anything of my own volition required enormous effort. I have no idea how I managed to make it to those endless rehearsals, except that they provided a brief release from my glass prison, and I would step into the pretence of the show and forget. I remember they teased me for being such a dreamer, but my dreams - a least for a while - were my deliverance from death.

So, it was in this state of mind, when I had so little grip on anything apart from my own emptiness, that I met an _Angel_. Yes, you smile at me now; yes I was a silly thing – but believe me, my tale will get far more far-fetched than this! I had, by this time, been moved to a dressing room far away from the rest of them, and no-one knew why, not even Mme Giry. At first, I was a little disappointed to move away from the rest of the girls and their wild talk, but I soon grew to relish the warm silence of that room; it was a sanctuary from the whirl that seemed to engulf the rest of the Opera. And of course, it was there that I would meet the Angel! 

My friend would often come to that room to see that I was all right. What did she think I would do in that room, all alone? If she had only known the true extent of the strange things I got up to in there, she would have visited me far more often.

One evening after a performance, I was slumped in my chair thinking never to move again. My eyes were closed, and I began, I believed, to slip into a dreaming sleep. In my dream a soft voice spoke, ‘ _Christine.’_ It spoke again, ‘ _Christine’_ and I opened my eyes, and called for my visitor to come in, for I thought he – for the voice was very definitely male - was outside in the long corridor. The door did not move; I went and looked but there were only the dim lamps on the walls and silence without. I suddenly felt my back to be terribly exposed as I realised that the owner of the voice was inside my room. Summoning all my courage I turned around, only to see my pale reflection in the mirror. Had my reflection been talking to me? Had I finally slipped over the edge? And then for the third time the voice - and what a voice! – spoke, ‘Christine, do not be afraid. I am an angel sent by your father in heaven!’ I sank to my knees in utter bewilderment as if the floor had tilted sharply beneath my feet, and mumbled something about my father's well-being, while _an Angel_ informed me that he was sent to bring my voice to its full glory. He told me that I was to stand up, and that I was to take singing lessons from him every morning in my room. And that is exactly what happened.

Thus began three golden months of tuition from the _Angel of Music_. You smile again, and now it quite plainly sounds ridiculous. But then – then I was not the woman I am now - I never for one moment thought that to meet regularly with an unseen angel was an unusual thing to do, or that people would wonder what I did for so long in my room on my own. The fullness and calm that I had held before my father’s death returned to me, and those hours that I spent with the Angel were full of light and freedom.

The angel’s voice - perhaps now, to you here, I can only describe how I saw it when I shut my eyes and listened. It was a thick gold rope that twisted and turned of its own accord; caressing, encircling, kneading me; it would become part of me, my thoughts and my mood. And the Angel took my own voice and transformed it into something that I did not know, that I hardly possessed, although it was my throat from which it came. When I sang with him and for him it was as though I flew, so remarkable was the lightness that I felt within myself. It is strange to describe singing in this way, for it is so natural and human a thing, but during those times to sing became the highest point of my life, the peak to which all my life I had been trying to climb.

The Angel was a strict teacher, but I found myself, in that false world that he and I created, coming to love him. It was not the fresh, happy first love that girls experience, but a love that was intense, that frightened me, that exalted him; I became tied to him as if he were mine and I were his. We would sing together words from the Song of Songs: _'I am my beloved and he is mine...'_ The Angel became my reason for being - there was so little else to tie me to this earth - I _lived_ his voice, for his presence with me. In rare moments of lucidity, away from that room, I did wonder about my sanity, but those thoughts scared me, shards of light that cut the enveloping warmth of my dreams, and so I would shut them from my mind, as effectively as I did all other thoughts that I did not like. I shut everyone else out, because I knew, deep within me, they might try to disabuse of my Angel - that they might know I was being terribly deluded, and I did not want anyone to break my precious dream.

I dare say there were those who were relieved when _Raoul_ appeared on the scene. Sweet, handsome Raoul, my sailing boy. What did he ever know? What could he ever know? But for all my reverie, it was still a great delight to see an old childhood friend. But it was his presence that proved to be another knife to slash the cobweb of our dream and destroy all that might have been. His intentions towards me were entirely unexpected - at first I simply enjoyed his boyish charm - it was for my Angel that I lived, but gradually, as my friendship with him rekindled – Raoul was so persistent - the Angel grew increasingly strict, and, it seemed to me, jealous. I grew to cherish Raoul's solidity and his good temper, while time spent with the Angel became hot and thick with his brooding possessiveness. I, at twenty, did not want to be possessed! The Angel made it clear that if I were to continue under his tuition I would have to end my friendship with Raoul - in order that I would become, as he said, a 'disciplined performer'. But I, naively, could not see any danger in our friendship, for it was the Angel who still had me caught in his net, and it was his voice, his very presence that gave me such completeness in the depth of my being, that Raoul, for all his beauty could never match. Oh, I should have stopped it all there! I should have awoken from my terrible dreams! But what could I have done?

But as time passed, despite Raoul, despite my little doubts, the Angel brought my voice to such an extraordinary state, that when, mysteriously, the great and previously insurmountable La Carlotta was unable to sing at the gala performance, _I_ was asked to replace her. Oh, that night when I sang was like nothing I had ever known - not even when singing with the Angel in my dressing-room. It was as though I had ceased to be and become the music, as though I disintegrated and became my song. And because I sang for him, it was as though I had overcome the boundaries of myself and burst into the flames of the music. After that night I was infinitely changed; in singing, I had both given him my soul and celebrated my own death. The audience went wild.

How could Raoul, for all his sweetness, pull me away from someone who so inspired me, who so brought me beyond myself? I was soon to find out.

A few weeks after the 'famous' gala performance, at the end of a lesson, I asked my Angel to show himself to me. It was an innocent question entirely born of my desire to be closer to him, to really know my Angel: naturally, I expected the owner of that golden voice to be gold. His response was immediate and cutting. He told me that I was not to ask such rude and foolish things again. And, with that, he left me alone in my room, without a word. For several days I would arrive in my room expecting to resume my lessons, but the Angel was not there, or if he was, he refused to make his presence known. It was only then that I realised the full extent of my addiction to his voice and his music, and as each day passed without my hearing him, I grew increasingly tense and sad.

I missed my Angel, I missed his company, the feeling I got when I was with him of being completely known. Does that sound strange? For when I was with him, I had no need to act the coquette, to flirt or to flatter him. I simply was; it was like being with someone I had known for a very long time. And he made me laugh - I believed I shared secret, delicious jokes with an Angel! He delighted me! - and then he was gone. And I was left to spend to my afternoons looking at Raoul's strong jawline.

Finally Raoul asked me why I was so pale, why I was no longer his sweet girl - and I told him of my angel and of his sudden disappearance - and Raoul laughed and told me I was deluded and should rest, perhaps I would like to go to the country for a while? A shard of fright entered my heart. I began to think I had imagined it all, that - horror of horrors - I was indeed losing my mind.

But the lie was revealed by the one I person I had thought to be true. After a performance, I was collapsed in my dressing room chair, again trying my old trick of not moving and, it seemed, returning to that state of grim melancholy that had held me before I met the Angel. Without warning the voice - his voice - spoke, enlivening my cold silence. Oh! to hear him again! I stood up, crying, ‘Angel!’ And he said,‘Tonight shall you know me,’ and he began to sing, his voice seeming to come from directly behind my mirror. Instinctively I walked towards it, and suddenly - I cannot say how - the mirror flicked upwards and back and his voice became even purer, and I perceived in the darkness an even darker shadow, who took me by the hand and led me down a long passage. Why did I not protest? For it was from that man that the glorious voice came. I was held enraptured by it, and my only thought was to be where it was. I remember he placed me upon a white horse, its animal warmth on my thighs, the light of his lantern ahead of us, our silent descent down, down beneath Opera, a journey that we completed by boat across a lake.

I found myself having been taken an Angel's voice into, it seemed, the very depths of the earth. And instead of beholding a Golden Angel, I saw only a masked man in a very ordinary house, full of dark, ugly furniture. In my confusion the masked man led me to a little bedroom, with a wooden bed, and gave me a sweet drink, and he sang me a soft lullaby and I fell asleep. Telling you these things now I can scarcely believe they happened, so extraordinary they sound to me now. I was a dreamer in a long-forgotten folktale, hardly aware of myself, so placid in my acceptance. What had he done to me? What was I willing to believe? Where would I have followed him?

What must you think of me? I am not the girl I was!

I awoke suddenly the next morning - there was a clock by my bedside! - feeling utterly disoriented. I saw a door and decided that I would find where I was by going through it. I opened it and came into a little drawing room and there was the masked man who appeared to have been waiting for me, as if my presence there was the most normal thing in the world. He stood up and gave a little bow, and I stared at him, opened mouthed.

Eventually words came, and I asked him, like a child, where my Angel was. And there was the voice again – ‘Christine, there is no angel; there is only me, Erik’ – and his bowed his head a little as he spoke. Before I had time to make into words my confusion, he put his forefinger to his mouth, and whispered ‘I will explain later, you must eat,’ and with that he produced a meal of bread and rich coffee.

And so, I found myself far below the Paris Opera with a masked man who said his name was Erik, and who seemed intent on looking after me, lavishing all his attention on what he perceived to be my every need. And yet this strange man was the owner of that angelic voice with whom I'd spent so much time, but I could not believe what I was seeing; I could not make the connection between the Angel that I thought I’d loved and this creature. He was so different in appearance to what I'd imagined him to be! Ah, how innocent I was. What did I know of him?

Far from being golden, the man - Erik - was dressed entirely in black. His mask covered all of his face, apart from his eyes and mouth and chin. He was tall, almost imposing, and had broad shoulders which made me want to put my hands on them simply to enjoy their strength. And despite his size, he made graceful, fluid movements, but my sense of disappointment at his not being an Angel was crushing, and I think I must have looked very miserable sitting there on the couch.

When I had finished eating (I was not very hungry at all), Erik got up, announced that I was to dress, and we were then to begin my lesson, almost as if he was playing a kind of happy game. He must have seen surprise on my face, for he then told me patiently that _my voice_ was the reason he had brought me here; to give me intensive training before I was finally to leave his guidance. At the time, it seemed a perfectly reasonable explanation, as good as any other for bringing me down there. 

When I was dressed, I followed him into another darker room where, against one wall, stood an upright piano. The walls of the room were lined with hundreds upon hundreds of musical scores, huge volumes of complete orchestrations, in high cases, the place an entire library of music. He sat down at the piano and instructed me to warm my voice up with the exercises while he played.

As I sang, I contemplated the man who swayed before me at the piano. Why did he choose to live here? Was he all alone? Memories of the ballet girls’ wild stories of the 'Opera Ghost' surfaced in my mind. Was this man the ghost? He was obviously a very great musician - I had known that all along - but why did he choose to teach me? What was beneath the mask? As he played, and as I sang, I watched his hands move effortlessly across the keys. He had long fingers that easily covered an octave and a half. I saw his veins as they meandered over the back of his hand, the curve of the muscle between his thumb and forefinger, his waisted thumbs, the finger ligaments that rippled beneath his skin. What hands he had. What music they produced.

He soon perceived my lack of concentration, and turned and looked at me, and asked what I was thinking about. The mask, that hid so many of his expressions, could not hide his eyes; they were exceptionally pale, having hardly any colour in them at all, and so had the curious effect of becoming the colour of his surroundings. The room was lit by oil lamps and so his eyes appeared to burn orange or yellow. I have never been looked at since the way he looked at me. It was as though he touched me, tasted me, warned me through his eyes, so intense was his gaze. It seemed to me that his eyes were knives that would cut me to my core.

But for the first time I noticed a hint of apprehension, of nervousness, in his speech, as if he couldn't quite believe his audacity in bringing me down there. I told him I thought of nothing but the music, an explanation that he only half seemed to accept. He got up from the piano and fetched the score of Handel’s opera _Giulio Cesare_. We were to sing the duet _Caro! Bella!_ the lyrics a bitter foretelling of what was to come. We had sung this duet many times before, in my room, separated by the walls, his voice far lower than mine. But this time – I remember the shock of hearing him so well! – he sang it had it been written, our voices now occupying the same musical space, entwining and sensuous and intimate. Yes, the tales of the Siren who swam in the underground lake were all true – it was always him!

We came to the end, and he took his hands from the piano and sighed, not turning to look at me, saying nothing at all. I looked at his neck, which betrayed nothing of what lay beneath his mask, the skin that dissolved into his dark hair at the nape. I wanted to touch him right there, to dig my thumbs into the flesh of his shoulders, to soothe and comfort him by the warmth of my own hands. But I did not reach out to bring comfort. Instead I found myself reaching for that mask.

For many years I have heard in my dreams the terrible cry he gave when I pulled the mask from his face. Even now, as I tell you, the memory is vivid. As I wrenched off his mask I twisted his head round so I caught the full horror of that face, made more wild by his rage. He stood up and came towards me with a silent howl of _why_? I stumbled back away from him, against the bookcases, unable to breathe for fear of what I'd done to him, aghast what I was seeing. He followed me to that wall bringing his chaotic, crumbling face very near to mine, so close I could feel his breath against my cheek, his spittle on my skin, all a cruel parody of the words we’d been singing only moments before. He was hissing! _‘What have you done Christine? Know what I am! Drink in my beauty with your eyes! Your glorious angel!’_

I saw in him that insane white rage one experiences as a child before such feelings are bound by the rational mind. His lithe hands slipped round my neck, those thumbs that I had admired beginning to push behind my throat. I opened my eyes and mouth wide in utter fear, but mercifully he turned away from me cursing and groaning, holding his head with his hands. He addressed me with his back to me, almost unbelievably with _'your lesson will continue tomorrow morning'_ , and he left me standing there in the gloom, with only my huge confusion and thundering heart for company. I stood for a long while, quite still, close against the wall, stunned by what I'd seen. His face, you must know this, _you must,_ was appalling, a parody of a face, but what had I done to him?

I now knew why he chose to live down there, in the dark; it would have been impossible to lead a normal life looking like he did. By pulling the mask from his face I had done the thing he most feared. I had ripped apart his attempt to forget what he was, to be with me like any other man. I ask myself all these years later; _why did I do this terrible thing to him, this violation?_ I had shown yet again that he was a thing to be feared, to run away from; that I could not see beyond the form of his skin to the reality of his soul, that he could never be released from the prison of his body.

But as I stood there I realised that I would not fear his face; Is it not true that the memory of the people whom you most love is not of their face, but of the feeling you experienced when with them, or their laugh, or the way they spoke? I knew that when my father died it was his face that I first forgot, the essence of him lived on in me, unchanged. One does not look into the face of friends and notice the shape of their eyes or the mouth, but one sees _them_ , which is so much more than the outline of their skin on their skull. I knew that I had to convince Erik of these truisms, to undo a lifetime of hatred; the words, ‘I do not see your face, but you’, became a mantra I was to repeat many times in the coming days.

How we were to bridge the cavern I knew he believed had opened up between us? We met the following morning in the little drawing room, our first words to each other in this new world of knowing were spoken tentatively, and a piercing awareness of the fragility of our situation hung in the air. When I apologized for my actions he told me to try to forget what I’d seen, please forget that was me. It seemed to me that the thought of my knowing his ugliness was too much for him to bear, for it was a constant reminder of that repulsive thing that so continually denied him what he needed most. For he had learnt by rote the cruellest of lessons; that the face is the sum total of a person, that love is gained or lost by virtue of the shape of the eyes, the size of the nose. Had I now most savagely confirmed to him again that that lesson was correct? So he was no longer my angel, or my strange captor, but a man who raged beneath the mask of his face, buried alive, it seemed, by his own self-loathing and the revulsion he inspired in others. Had he trusted me to find him in his darkness?

But Erik was not a man to succumb easily to a waking death, and that radiance that I perceived when I knew him as an Angel now flowed from him in the passion of his music, the power of his voice and most disturbingly of all, his palpable longing for me. I may have been young and sweet, but I was not entirely innocent - I knew what longings were there in his eyes, in the intensity of his gaze. We spent that evening reading, our keenly felt tension thinly veiled by our determined attempt at tact; it was hard to say who was the more wary. 

But as the time passed our mutual disquiet mellowed and I discovered his talent for telling wild stories, and I began to relax in his presence, and perhaps he in mine. Although I think we both found our state of affairs extraordinarily strange, there still remained that friendship between us that had developed during the time when he was my Angel, and quite simply, we enjoyed each other.

I stayed with him for a little over two weeks, and we spent that time engaged in my voice lessons, walking around 'his' lake or in the evening around the streets of Paris, the late-night absinthe drinkers seeing things far stranger than a masked man and his young lady. Our walks around those majestic streets became to us both a glimpse of what perhaps could have been between us. I loved our gentle conversation, those patient words we spoke, slowly drawing each other out towards the light.

But I knew he walked on a knife edge between love and hate for me. For despite his great regard for me, a pure unformed energy bubbled so close to his surface there were times when I could feel his want physically. It was his rawness that so frightened me. I remember once, I was reading in his little front room, when I became aware of him watching me intently. I asked him what he was thinking, and he said that when he was with me he did not think, he simply was, as if I were, _as if I could be_ , his completion.

I have heard it said that if you give a man a mask he will tell you the truth; I certainly found that true regarding Erik, for he seemed to attempt to tell me his whole heart. 

During our regular walks he would at first tell me the most fantastical stories, so vividly describing the characters that I often believed that if I turned around I would see a great colourful procession of them following along behind us. We were more alike than you could imagine, both dreamers who could longed more than anything else to sail out to our dream-island where the deep waters would protect us from the harshness of the mainland. When he had discovered that I was an attentive listener he began to tell me the thoughts that had long lain silent in his mind, and I knew that it was a relief for him to be able to unwrap them with me. As I listened, I became aware of the darkness of his soul, his bitter, corrosive regret for his entire life, and the abyss which he described within himself, that he found too foul to even contemplate.

I have always found it strange, since knowing Erik, that people associate singing with great joy, for the songs that he sang when he thought I was sleeping were black and harsh; hatred distilled into sound, misery the fragrance of the air, now so different from the Angel’s' song. I would listen, helpless and mute, appalled at my inability to provide any comfort or to soothe his wounds. On the occasions when we sang together his voice was a river, at times clear and powerful, pulling me along in the undertow of its melodies, at times like a lava flow, hot, destructive and aimed straight at me. The music he composed seemed that of a shaman, unafraid to plumb the depths and soar to the heights of human experience. What could he have been? Was I the only person who ever heard his brilliance? What a burden he placed on me! After several days of my coaxing I convinced him not to wear his mask around his house - at first we both found his naked face disconcerting - but it was a true measure of his trust in me that he would remove his mask voluntarily; just as he broke my trust, so I would break his.

Down there was a liquid darkness that flooded my eyes, and made me question the very existence of light; indeed Erik said that it was only because I had known light that I experienced darkness; he himself knew nothing of the darkness, but experienced the colours in the air, the music of the silence. He said that darkness was the only place to compose music for only there is the mind and spirit closest to their origin, the womb, where the pure music of the unborn can be remembered and recaptured before they are clothed in flesh. In that sightlessness, where I heard rather than saw, felt instead of watched, the horror of his face melted into the blackness, and just as I'd hoped, I ceased to see him but instead knew him. There were times when he spoke to me that I knew his need, felt his ache so strongly within myself, that it would almost make me cry out in pain, but I could not reach out to him. I was so bound by my own smallness of heart.

I saw his face and recoiled and yet at the same time I felt his pain, because I knew so deeply my own ache of aloneness. In his face I saw the most blatant expression of the captivity within our bodies that we have felt since the moment of birth, when we were finally spewed from our mother's womb, and became entirely and forever separate from her. Are we not always driven by some profound optimism towards others, to communicate, to attempt to know and to be fully known – to know again the pure bond between mother and child? _Had he ever known that?_ In him I saw the truth of that optimism, that essential source of life, and I can only wonder at his hope. Ah, God – what did I do to him? What could I have done?

When I left Erik for the first time, I promised that I would come back within ten days. I told him that he - _Raoul_ \- Erik could scarcely say his name without spitting, was not my lover. We both believed my lies. During my time with Erik I had discovered a world, a whole realm within myself that I no idea existed. He allowed me to discover him, a living, vibrant man, who had until that time had all but disappeared from humanity, swallowed up and masked by his darkness, shackled by the hate of his fellow humans. How did he manage to exist down there in that black, earthy vacuum? How he did remember who he was with no-one to remind him, what was it that kept him from disintegration? The emotional strength that such solitude demanded would have been enormous. He was indeed a ghost-man, who had made himself to others, and perhaps to himself, a memory, a passing shadow - but he was so alive! He said to me that he was like Raskolnikov, who had by his actions tried to take himself above humanity, but had failed, and that I was his little Sonya, although he did not think he would find redemption through me, a dark premonition of the things to come.

But despite this he said I had brought him life, had given him hope, simple things that most men never think about, but that he, throughout his whole life had been consistently denied. He whispered of his new-found ability to love, _my love for you is stronger than the pull of the grave_ , as if to say such precious words loudly would shatter them or scare me. Yet despite his exquisite tenderness my heart remained barred to him - even now I cannot say why - was it not enough to be loved like this? Oh, it was not his face, I grew used to that, but I was quite simply unable to return his love. He was dangerous, you must know this. He burned; he would consume me utterly. I ask you again; what could I do?

I returned to the world to continue with my work at the Opera, but I found myself, to my shame, clinging to Raoul as a drowning swimmer who clings to anything that floats. Raoul! My sailing boy! Ah, he was better than that, I needed him then. To be with him after my time with Erik was to climb onto a solid rock and gasp for air after being shipwrecked for days. Raoul had been frantic with worry during my time away and had even commissioned the police to search for me. I realised I loved Raoul for his simplicity - he demanded nothing of me, but that I was simply there with him - oh, it was a selfish love, but it was easy and enjoyable. I managed to push Erik and his impenetrable sadness from my mind and laugh and giggle with Raoul. I was terribly shallow.

I learnt of the murder of Joseph Buquet, and it was not hard to guess to whom the catgut rope belonged. My Angel. One evening I ran with Raoul to the roof of the Opera house - it was there I believed that I could get as far away from Erik's darkness as possible - and revealed to him everything I had experienced. Raoul convinced himself that Erik was sure to kill us both if he ever knew of our 'love', and that I must never go back to him. I was weak and enjoyed the feeling of being so looked after, of escaping from the complexity of the situation before me and have someone else make all the decisions. I was such a child. And so, we planned to leave Paris after my final performance that week and take a train to Sweden and get married in the mountains.

I spoke my betrayal directly to the one I betrayed, for only a few metres from us he must have stood, broken and crushed by every word that passed my lips. No, I would not be allowed to leave like this, to slip from his overwhelming love like a sleeping death. After my last performance, it was Erik, not Raoul who met me in the wings, in whose arms I was carried away. I found myself once again being taken to his house, and as before I did not protest. 

But this time there was no song to entice me, no sweet nothings whispered in my ear. We arrived in his house and he began his own prayer of supplication addressed to me. ‘Christine, Christine, you meant to leave me? How could you do this to me? You promised! You lied!’ And he spoke and spoke of his love for me, of his great loneliness, of his waking death, of his pain.And his words grew more angry and bitter until I was quite sure he had begun to hate me for what I'd done. And who wouldn't have hated me? I began to cry for him - yes, I’ve shed a thousand tears for him since, will my tears for him ever cease? - but mainly for me at my own smallness of heart, and this only incensed him more. He began to shout and roar, years of bitterness came thundering at me. His voice and words became unbearable, and I began to run round and round his house, desperate for a way out. Erik followed me, laughing, tormenting me, and so I screamed and wailed in a vain attempt to block that sound from my ears, the pair of us in a crazy mockery of our Great Duets that we had sung a few days earlier.

Suddenly I came across a door I had not seen before, which flung open at my frantic clawing and let me out onto the banks of the lake. With no other thought save from deafening myself to his voice, I plunged into the water, shattering its inky stillness. I waded in, my skirts billowing around my waist hindering my descent, until mercifully the water started to flow into my mouth, my nose, my ears, and oh, I heard nothing but the loud silence of the water. I floated there, still and peaceful, and thought, I've escaped! But my deathly tranquillity did not last for long, for I felt his hands grabbing my hair, forcing my chin upwards out of the water, our struggle a watery dance.

He dragged me back to the shore, where we found ourselves standing staring at each other, our irregular, rasping breathing echoing around that cavern. His shirt clung to his skin and the water on his unmasked face ran in rivulets onto his chest and I had never imagined him so vulnerable, so human. We stood facing each other, consuming each other in our gaze, suddenly aware of the fierce inequality of love. What were we in that moment? Lovers or haters? It was in that moment that I realised it was I who held the key, who possessed the power of life or death; it was he who was my prisoner. In that moment I could have reached out and touched him, opened the door and released him, given him life, and we both knew it. And yet, I did not! In my terrible inactivity I chose, I sealed our fate, and killed him, before any decision was ever asked of me. He turned and picked up the lantern and walked wearily back to his house.

He stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the light from his house. ‘Christine,’ he called, ‘are you going to come in or do you want me to bring a blanket out?’ He sounded so normal, so kind then that I gasped. I replied that I was coming in, and he disappeared inside. When I arrived in the front room, Erik emerged having dried and changed his wet clothes. He handed me a towel and sat and watched me as I rubbed my hair.

The balance of power had changed now and for a while I was his gaoler, but the moment did not last long. From his seat he said quite calmly, ‘Christine you must make a choice, you must choose now.’ He got up and beckoned me to a small curtain set over a part of the wall. It surprised me and I said I didn't know there were any windows here. He smiled and drew it back, and there was a little window, through which I looked, and to my horror I saw Raoul and another man in a forest

I turned to Erik, my eyes wide and my mouth open. ‘ _What have you done?’_ I howled. ‘I haven't done anything,’ he replied, ‘he came here of his own free will, to rescue you, my dear, from me.’ ‘What will happen to him?’ I demanded. Erik told me that the room will grow so hot that he will die of thirst or cause him to lose his mind and hang himself from that branch. I began to beat with my fists on the window, until he caught my wrists and held them both high above my head. He brought his face very close to mine, his breath hot on my skin and said, ‘he cannot hear you, Christine, you can only save him by staying here, with me. Say yes to me and he is free to go, and all the barrels below us ready to go up if you say no, will be flooded with water!’

I felt the blood drain from my face; this was too much! Condemn Raoul and countless others to death or lose my own life down here? ‘You ask too much of me,’ I gasped, and then, unexpectedly honest with him said, ‘to be with you would be to entomb myself, to surrender at twenty to the grave!’ And he laughed and held my wrists still higher until I had to stand on the tips of my toes saying, ‘You poor girl! What sacrifice! What eternal torment! It seems that either way you choose, you die!’ I felt my stomach clench, and begged him to let me go. At this he lifted me clean off the floor and we stared at each other, his rage palpable and all of sudden he dropped me and I fell to the floor. He sat, arms tight around his body, head down.

It was now my turn to crawl. I was on my knees before him. For the first time in a long while I ceased to think of myself. I cried, ‘You must not harm Raoul, let him go, he does not deserve this!’ As my entreaties became more impassioned, so Erik grew more contemptuous of me; ‘How can I ever trust what you say? You lie! I cannot live without you, but you hate me and love another!’

I tried to tell him it was he I loved but it was plainly useless. At hearing this he spat. ‘You spoke your betrayal to me! I was there, with you, when you proposed to him! I heard your disgust of me!’ I fell silent, stunned by what I'd done to him, the extent of my cruelty, the extent to which he would pursue me, punish me.

Yet what had he become, this terrible man? How had he deceived me so? In those moments I felt a constellation of hate for him, as all-consuming as he professed his love for me to be. _And yet, what could I do?_ My situation was impossible. _What could I do, what I could do?_ I bowed my head and whispered that I was sorry. Erik sat down again, and said softly, almost sang, ‘you're in me, Christine Daae, an infection, you're insects in my veins, and I will not live without you.’ I moved away from him and sat in a cold huddle in a corner of the room, my dress still full of water. Erik remained in his chair, his eyes shut, lost to me.

We remained locked into our lonely silences for a long time, oblivious to the murders that were happening only on the other side of the wall. The faint cries of Raoul and the other man disturbed me from my passive despair. I got up and went to the window of that strange mirrored room, and saw them both, lying on the floor. It seemed to me that they were indeed on the brink of death. Again, I felt my stomach tighten, and again I turned to Erik who was watching me and sobbed ‘They're dying! Please Erik! Don't let them die! What are you doing? What can I do?’ He got up and stood directly opposite me and said, ‘What can you do?’ I remember how clearly and deliberately he spoke.

‘You know, Christine, I have never been kissed. Not even by my own mother.’ I got up from my huddle on the floor in a silent response. I stared back at him, waiting for him to continue, but he did not, and only looked helplessly into my eyes, all rage gone, the river that had carried us both this far now rushing towards an immense and terrible waterfall, all choice removed, surrender the only choice. He seemed very near tears. I replied quietly, ‘is that what you want?’ He didn't move, aghast at what I was offering, his eyes now filled with huge apprehension. I moved closer to him, my hands enfolding his, appalled at what I was doing, amazed at its tragic necessity. I was to give all I could; my poor sacrifice for him. I tilted my head up and placed my mouth gently over his, feeling the soft tingle as our lips touched, the warmth of his blood so close to mine. And I kissed him.

I am my beloved's and he is mine.

We stood for a long time locked in an embrace, my head resting on his shoulder. Our hearts beat together, and I could feel his laboured breathing in my encircling arms. I held him while he wept. It was all I could do. Nothing could be said to heal his sorrow, nothing I could say to blunt the knife of my incapability. But I ask now, even when he held so many lives in such contempt, even then, could I have truly loved him?

Finally, we released each other, and he gave me a long look of utter wonder and left the room. There were no words to express the depth of that embrace, that kiss. To me a kiss was such a commonplace thing; yet so simple a gesture was enough to change everything. It would have been so easy for me to have redeemed him completely, to give the love he needed, but I did not. Shortly he returned with Raoul and the other man, supporting them on either arm. Raoul staggered towards me murmuring some words of delight and the dark-skinned man stood unsteadily in the centre of the room. From under Raoul's heavy embrace I could see Erik watching us.

When Raoul finally took hold enough of his senses, he turned on Erik, in a vain attempt to protect me. But as he lurched across the room he tripped and fell and remained there, groaning. Erik said to me over him that he would release us both, that he knew I loved the young man. Oh! He held out a ring and asked me softly if I would do him the great honour of wearing it, at least for a while. I offered my left hand to him, and he took it and placed the ring on my fourth finger. He grasped my hand for some time staring at his ring on my hand. I in turn, stared at him, quite unable to take in the profundity of his action, of what he was doing to me, of what I had done to him. I was numb and remained silent.

When at last Raoul was capable of standing, he took us both out to the lake and gave us the boat and instructed Raoul how to get back. I made no protest, no action to stop this. I left the man who had opened every pore of my being to see to hear to feel and followed sweet, boring Raoul, back to the surface. I left the man to whom I owed the world, and went with Raoul, who had taken me out to dinner. Why? Because I knew that if I stayed with Erik, I would die to everything I had known, and still I had no faith in him - I could see nothing of the splendour that lay beyond - my wake from sleep - the sleep that is necessary to life. ' _Whosoever finds his life shall lose it, and whosoever loses his life will find it._ ' And in saving my own life, I killed him. There were no long goodbyes, nothing to mark the enormity of this event in our lives, only the gentle splash of the oars in the water to sound out our parting.

I failed him totally and utterly. I was not strong enough to bear him, and his sad attempt at self-resurrection. I left him to be consumed by ravages of his mind and his infernal aloneness, to sink unheeded and forever unloved into the merciless slick of darkness. I thought only of myself and of my own life. But – I ask you again - what would have become of me down there? I love light, I love colour, I love to see the sun. I could not live down there with only his terrible face and his maddening music! Yet there was a lifetime of things left unsaid between us, and always, _always_ when I think of him a hard lump of sorrow, like a smooth stone, rises deep within my chest, and I hear his voice singing _My love, my love. I am the one you seek. I am the one who completes you._ And I sometimes now, through all these circling years, I could believe he was right.

I did not marry Raoul - we had scarcely left Paris before I realised my mistake in thinking my dependence on him was love, and by the time we arrived at Calais I had ended our engagement and resolved to go England alone. That sounds so harsh, does it not, after all he had done for me? But I had just left one man I had believed I felt no love for - I could hardly fall into the arms of a man for whom I felt even less. Perhaps I would have gone back to Erik, had I not seen the promised announcement of his death in the newspaper. I can only assume he died by his own hand.

I managed to rent a small flat in London, and found employment as a singing teacher to the bored daughters of the middle classes. They found it terribly exotic to have a French singing teacher! I never sang again on the public stage; all my previous ability seemed to have depended on Erik - now that he was gone, my voice lost its radiance and I lost my will. How quickly I changed from a girl in love with wild stories of faeries and deluded by angels to a self-employed woman! How modern I was! Yet knowing Erik had taught me to see the invisible and the things that are not and to cherish them. After knowing him I lived my life on a different level - in many ways I had 'died' to my old self. But I loved the grey anonymity of London, and would often waste time wandering around its streets, making them my memory, trying forget to my sadness. I missed him - each time I found myself in the dark, I expected to feel his warmth, or hear his voice.

I relished my spinster-life. Several years after I arrived in London I was asked to help organise a little Christmas concert by the parents of one of my pupils. On the afternoon of the concert I was perched precariously up a ladder trying in vain to decorate a high door arch with a garland of holly. Suddenly I became aware of a man standing beneath me looking up and laughing at my efforts. This added to my frustration, and I tried even more furiously to get it to stay. Which only resulted my dropping the whole thing on top of the man, at which he laughed even louder. I stomped down the ladder prepared to berate him for not being in the slightest bit helpful, but before I had a chance to speak he introduced himself as Peter, a violinist playing in that evening's concert. I have encountered Don Juan in all the men I have loved; in Raoul I saw his beauty and youth, in Erik his destructive passion, and in Peter his laugh - a laugh that can overcome the world.

Peter and I were married the following June. I invited Raoul, but apparently he was in Africa working for the government and could not leave his position. I loved Peter precisely because he laughed at me, because he treated me as though I had a mind of my own (which by that time, fortunately, I did), not as some precious doll to be admired from afar as Raoul had done, or as though I were a goddess to be worshipped like Erik. He saw me as a woman and did not try to change me into an angel. We have three children, although they're hardly children now. John is an Officer in the army and is stationed near Ypres at the moment - and oh, I fear for him every at every breath. Albert is in Wandsworth prison for refusing to fight - I cannot say which of my boys is braver. Rachel, my youngest, was a suffragette before the war, and took great delight in chaining herself to railings chanting slogans, but now works in a munitions factory and is subdued and yellowed by the war, and spends long nights writing letters to her husband who is away fighting.

This is a sad time - _La Belle Epoch_ is well and truly over, I try to block my regret for the choice I failed to make so long ago. It is strange how we fear the consequences of our actions, but so often it is things that we do not do, that we do not act on, the world we missed, that we most mourn. But I am a secret bigamist; in the bright rush of days I am Peter's, but in the eternal rhythms of night, in the release of dreams, I belong to Erik.


End file.
